Capitol Hill Blue Forums Misc. Topics General Stuff What is wealth? How is it made? How is it accounted?

I think you are putting new wine into your old wineskins. What do think is the meaning of the wineskins parable?

Perhaps you could be persuaded to refresh the forum on the definition you are following for what Capitalism means? (I wasn’t fully aware the representation of it from you that I have perceived was a straw man).

Too many separate threads is scattering the discussion all around, bear with me for trying to weave some of the elsewhere comments in here.

If I am understanding correctly, the Purpose statement posted above is regarded by you as an example of “late stage Capitalism”. I posted it as an example of blending social, environmental, and business "interests" as a healthy alternative to Capitalism. This business (it is a real one, not an idealized theory) is an innovative effort to reverse a suite of dangerous and cancerous patterns that are the direct result of extremely well-established manifestations of Capitalism. "Late stage" implies that Capitalism is evolving - I agree with you that it needs to evolve, but it needs to evolve into something that isn't Capitalism.

The fact that you are adding in to your ideology of Capitalism elements of non-Capitalist remediations in order to address the human and Earth needs for healing from the effects of more than a century of exploitation of human and environmental resources (for the sake of financial wealth of the few) is noble. But I think that it is incorrect and confusing to call that "late stage Capitalism". It's actually the taming of Capitalism (which intrinsically has no ethics or morality) and using it to serve social and environmental needs for a healthy and sustainable world.

One of my former signature lines was, "You can't solve a problem until you understand what the problem is."

I believe I now understand the problem that causes us to adversarially discuss Capitalism. To use another metaphor (not to be construed as your position on the subject of the the metaphor) - people who are opposed to the removal of Confederate statues from prominent public places want to preserve their history and ancestry. But I see those statues of Confederate generals as fake history, the preservation and presentation of traitors and slaveholders as cultural icons - heroes. Within the context of a healthy civilization those heroes were very destructive in many ways, though for hundreds of years slavery brought a few wealth, comfort, and power. History is being made now, by actions taken to correct the fake history that was put in place to preserve flawed ideologies.

CP, you mentioned earlier that I am confusing Capitalism and greed... I am not. The main characteristic dominating the manifestation of Capitalism, in reality, is greed. It would improve Capitalism immensely if it did not contain greed, but...

I appreciate it that you envision a kinder, gentler Capitalism, but it is an intellectual fantasy at this point.

A kinder gentler capitalism is social democracy. A balanced, evolved system. The Scandinavian model for instance...

Bernie Sanders

There's your capitalism at work doing what it does best.

Corporatism is perhaps the biggest problem.

It acts just like the socialist governments conservatives fear but operates under the guise of free marketry.

Not much time, but, yeah - Corporatism is a real problem, but, tragically, an inevitable outgrowth of allowing the government to pick winners in the marketplace. When you fix it so that the most profitable investment one can make is in buying a congresscritter or seven, that is what monied interests will do.

Buying politicians on the free market isn't part of Capitalism?

Nope. Because buying and selling occur within any framework. Capitalism just says that industries are privately owned.

Like, if we had a King, all the land belonged to him. For a portion of their crops, farmers were allowed to farm it and grow food for themselves. Kings were fabulously wealthy, people were fabulously poor. Some farmers slipped the king a few extra bushels of rye and they got more land to farm.

It worked okay for a long time. Then people realized they were getting f*cked. Torches an pitchforks ensued.

Bribing officials has no ideology.

What if they're privately owned?

Just wrapping up another grant writing effort - USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service Conservation Innovation Grant. Thankfully, I'm not the primary author on this one, which is a collaborative project involving a Cleveland African/American food sustainability nonprofit, a Detroit inner city gardening movement, a Navajo tribal farming and greenhouse operation, and a collaboration of five social, agricultural, and business operations in my community.

The focus area for the grant opportunity that we are basing the proposal on is energy conservation in agricultural operations, so our biochar+energy systems are the piece linking all four sites together - expanding greenhouse operations to year-round function in a revenue positive model that creates an cascade of ancillary biochar related benefits.

In this age of fighting, destruction, and generally miserable attitudes, we are working for solutions. As my one of my heroes once said, "“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the old model obsolete." -R. Buckminster Fuller